Summary of the April 4th Finance Committee meeting

On April 4th, 2017 the Board and leadership staff from each site met for a Finance Committee meeting. Annie was on vacation and missed the meeting, though she prepared the reports.

Each site now has a mortgage on the Balance Sheet: Northampton owns the condo the office is in, SLO and Portland purchased Still Point residences. The sites are holding steady, though the revenues are not as high as budgeted. Neither are the expenses. There was a conversation about how to track our sense of new clients coming into the program and clients leaving the program. Lisa and Ken, Director and Board member associated with Portland, were going to bring a proposal about soft metrics back to the group.

An amendment to the health insurance benefit part of the employee handbook was reviewed and a few changes requested. The wording is about helping cover the costs of health insurance for the employees who have opted into the Medicare program (retirement age).

There is a new document for accounting procedures and policies that was reviewed and changed to reflect three separate sites handling fiscal tasks and reporting. The information still flows through a central “fiscal manager” as an ongoing auditor and point person for the Board. The Board asked that the CPA review our changes before they adopt them.

The next meeting, which is a Board/Finance meeting is planned for Tuesday, May 2nd at noon ET for 90 minutes. It will be Spirit Joseph’s last meeting after serving a term plus. Let Victoria know if you have anyone who may be interested in serving on our board.

Written by Victoria Yoshen, Executive Director of Windhorse IMH Northampton.

The New Education Director

At the All Staff meeting on April 5, 2017, Jeremy changed his title from Education Manager to Education Director. He “took his seat” in a role that is considered a core value in the Windhorse approach. Jeremy is joining Phoebe and Victoria in making decisions about the Direction and Operations of the organization. Since we do this in a fairly flattened hierarchical way with “all voices heard”, it could be seen as one more channel through which information may flow. Jeremy has been instrumental in increasing training, helping with strategic planning, and bringing transparency to how our systems and decisions work at Windhorse. At All Staff he spoke about his interest in collaborations, integrating the wisdom people are gaining from external trainings and readings, and building relationships to help other organizations understand us better.

Feedback Loops at Windhorse

Part of the 2017 strategic plan for Windhorse is to establish better methods of evaluation and more feedback loops for all of the realms of the organization. We are constantly growing as a community and as we grow we want to make sure we continue to learn about ourselves, what we are doing well, and where we still need improvement or adjustment. If you, as a community member, have ideas about places where we could incorporate more feedback loops, or how we can add in other ways to evaluate the work done here, we welcome your thoughts. Please feel free to share your ideas with anyone on any of the steering committees. The current steering committee members are listed below:

Springtime Recipe

The Tuesday Farmers’ Market in Northampton is held from late April until early November. Among the many wonderful goods sold at the market there is an amazing feta cheese at the Cricket Creek Farm booth (they also make very tasty grilled cheese sandwiches at their booth). Feta is a wonderful addition to spring salads, often moving them from accessory to main dish category. Here is a simple recipe to try:

Link to the Pride March: http://www.nohopride.org/This year Noho Pride has decided to coordinate our theme with Boston Pride and Worcester Pride and are working with other regional Prides to do the same. The theme is Stronger Together. Our thought is that a coordinated regional approach will send an even more important message that our community is in fact, #StrongerTogether

Noho Pride’s Parade and Pride event May 6, 2017Parade starts at 12:00pm​Pride event starts at 1:30 and runs until 5pm
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New to the Windhorse Library

“Both Western psychotherapy and the Buddhist spiritual path are journeys toward increased self-awareness, understanding, and well-being. By drawing on Buddhist psychological teachings, contemplative psychotherapy provides a deeper, richer approach to client work, one that can greatly enhance and expand a clinician’s therapeutic repertoire.

While much has been written recently about mindfulness in psychotherapy and the underlying theory of Buddhist psychology, no book has yet been written that explains to therapists how to apply these teachings in their day-to-day clinical work with clients.

“Family WRAP helps each family member contribute to plans that the family will use to improve day to day interactions, meet daily challenges, and promote mutual cooperation, as well as plans to aid in the event of a crisis for a family member or for the whole family.

This book is full of Wellness Tools, suggested by families who use WRAP to help make their family life the way they want it to be.” – from the back cover